Monday, May 26, 2008
The
Drug Wars' Body Counts Continue To Mount in Mexico
By Allan
Wall
In Mexico, the ongoing battles between the drug cartels,
and between drug cartels and the government, go on and on – and the body count mounts.
On May 23rd, 2008, Mexican Attorney
General Eduardo Medina Mora announced that, thus far in calendar year 2008, killings linked to organized crime and drug trafficking
have increased 47% over those in 2007.
According to Medina Mora’s figures, as of May
24th there had been 1,378 such murders. At this time last year the figure was 940.
Since it’s only May, that means that 2008 is
well on the way to surpass the 2007 total of 2,500 killings.
The total body count (to date) during President Felipe
Calderon’s administration is 4,152 killings, 450 of whom were policemen, prosecutors or Mexican military personnel.
(As a point of comparison, the U.S. has lost
4,081 military personnel in Iraq since 2003).
Another way to look at the death toll is as a daily
average. On May 22nd (the day before Medina Mora’s higher figures were announced), Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper published its calculation of an average of 7.6 killings per day since Calderon took office,
although it added that in the week previous the average was 15 such killings per day.
According to Medina Mora, there has been a “significant
increase” of killings in the northern states of Chihuahua, Baja California and Sinaloa. Meanwhile, the killings have
decreased in Nuevo Leon,
Guerrero and Mexico City.
Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso, Texas)
has been the scene of heavy fighting, both between cartels, and between security forces and narco gunmen. In Ciudad Juarez
alone there have been about 400 such killings thus far in 2008.
In a grisly example near the city of Durango, six
severed heads were recently discovered alongside the highway. Each had been placed
carefully within a cooler, four of them in an abandoned vehicle, accompanied by threatening messages to a rival.
It may be no coincidence that the heads were placed
in the vicinity of where a gun battle took place several days earlier, in which eight gunmen were slain.
Reports also indicate that a realignment and reorganization
is taking place among the drug cartels, who live in a grim, dog-eat-dog world of shifting dependencies and alliances.
The U.S. government is preparing to aid the Mexican
government in its fight against the cartels, but this aid too is controversial.
President George W. Bush wanted to give Mexico US$500
million worth of aid, but neither congressional chamber was willing to give that much. The House approved US$400 million and
the Senate US$350 million. The difference is to be worked out in House-Senate
conference during the next few weeks.
Both congressional bills include making part of the
funding contingent upon human rights certification. This doesn’t set well with Mexican politicians who have charged
the United States with meddling. However, since this is an aid program, in which
they’re getting the aid for free, Mexico
will likely take whatever it is given.
Mexican Attorney General Medina Mora has long complained
about the smuggling of weapons from the United States to Mexico. Cartels arrange
for the purchase of weapons in the United States and move them into Mexico. This
problem is exacerbated by corruption within the Mexican Customs department, and the general lawless atmosphere that exists
on the U.S.-Mexican border.
Tighter border security would definitely help. However, the Mexican government complains when the United States tightens up the border. If you have a porous border it won’t be porous just for border crossers. It’s also porous for drugs and weapons!
U.S. leaders might point that out to Mexican leaders.
Of course, wherever there’s a market there are
suppliers. As long as U.S. drug users continue to purchase lots of narcotics
there will be people willing to sell to them. That makes U.S. drug addicts themselves the principal financiers of the Mexican drug cartels.
Famed Mexico watcher George W. Grayson, a professor
at the College of William and Mary, has gone so far as to say that “It’s impossible to win the drug war while
the demand exists in the United States and Europe.”
Combine corruption in Mexico which aids the cartels,
and massive American demand for their products, and you’ve got a big problem.
As the body count continues to mount….
——————————
Allan Wall, a MexiData.info columnist, recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. He
currently resides in Mexico, where he has lived since 1991.
